The God Who Never Fails

My prayers were all like grunts.

Oh God, he heard those prayers.

God doesn't mind getting in the mud and the quackmire.

God does not, he's not intimidated of messy situations.

In fact, I think he would rather have someone who's getting beat up

messily say, Lord, I need you,

than somebody in a polished way in Shakespearean English

voting scripture. God is looking at your heart.

Welcome to the City Light Church podcast.

Thanks for joining us today as we look into God's word

and discover the hope and truth that he has for us.

If you want to connect with City Light Church,

feel free to visit us at citylightnyc.com

that citylightnyc.com.

Pastor Boyan Jansik and his team believe that the power of the Holy Spirit

is already working in our hearts and minds.

As you listen to today's teaching,

remember that you are deeply loved by God,

that you are surrounded by His grace,

and that He has a real hope and a future for you.

So good to be with you this morning.

And again, welcome to those joining us online.

We have been in a wonderful season here at City Light Church.

It's like the Lord turned down the rocket boosters

some time in late 2024.

And the church has just had a palpable energy.

There's hunger in the place.

By the way, you have to recognize that, appreciate that,

and then weakly participate in that for it to keep going somewhere.

We can't now get laid back and go, all right,

Lord, I wonder what you're going to do next.

We participate with Him. Amen.

We're co-laborers with Him.

You hear that? We're co.

That's what the scripture says.

Co-laborers with Him.

He's not a father who tells His Son,

go out there and go mo my lawn.

No, He says, time to mo the lawn, son.

Come and help me. I'll mo it with you.

And He's saying to us right now,

children, it's time to have revival.

It's time to go to the next level.

It's time for an outpouring of the Holy Spirit.

I want you to participate.

Co-revival with Me.

So every time we show up, we show up hungry.

Lord is moved by our hunger, our faith.

So it's our job to be watchers and keepers of the flame

and keep the temperature high.

Hallelujah. That's why I mess with some people.

You know, if you're sitting there like an ice cube,

I got to mess with you a little bit.

I got to provoke you.

Because ice cube is on its spreads.

It's ugly.

Next thing you know, it's not just one person

or the whole row is chilly.

And we can't have that.

Hallelujah.

So we've been in a wonderful season.

And personally, my wife and I have been in a phenomenal season

of personal growth and our family growing

and us being prospered and blessed.

And it's really, it's kind of like,

Lord, you got to pinch me because I think I'm dreaming.

And I feel to just share some of the more challenging aspects

of my life that I've had over the years

to encourage some of you because some of you are new.

You've come in the last six months.

And maybe this is the only version of my wife and I that you know.

Smiling real big.

Everything is awesome.

Top of the world, ma.

And I want to share with you that it's not always been that way.

And we've had a lot of new people come.

A lot.

It's just 43 people just got baptized.

Yeah.

And the kind of people the Lord is bringing us.

People who don't have a Christian background.

And I've always prayed to the Lord

because I didn't have a Christian background.

And he plucked me out of whatever I was into,

a whole mess of things.

He plucked me out.

I wasn't even looking to be plucked out.

But he did it.

He apprehended me.

That's what the Apostle Paul said.

I was apprehended.

I was arrested by God.

So we've had people who were Buddhist,

Hinduists, atheists,

agnostics.

And in the first service,

when I began sharing my testimony,

I said, how many of you,

this is the first time you're hearing this,

and over half of the hands went up.

And I knew I was right on track.

Some of you need to hear this.

You're like, what's this?

I'm about to get to that.

I'm just saying, I'm explaining to you.

Because some of you have heard it.

And trust me,

it doesn't mean no joy to share some of these things.

It's not like they have an effect on me now.

I'm past them.

And I'm healed from them.

But, you know, every time it feels like

I'm just kind of undressing in front of everybody.

I read a Zee Kill,

how he had to walk around with Israel,

with his, you know, the Bible says,

his Zee Kill walked around with his whole backside showing.

I thought, man,

Lord, it wasn't one enough.

Do you have to do that to me, too?

Sometimes I feel.

You know, the hospital gowns,

they just got to make sure it's tied real well in the back.

So, right, a few months before Victor was born,

I started developing terrible back problems and back aches,

back pains.

It had been going on for several years.

I was diagnosed with four herniated discs.

And it really started to flare up right around the spring time of 2014.

I had about with it before several years before.

And I went to the chiropractor,

and he couldn't help me.

He was a great chiropractor before him.

I tried at least a dozen and a half other chiropractors.

And none of them could help me.

And he said, look,

you're going to have to go to a pain management specialist.

So, I go to a pain management specialist.

I walk into his fancy office in Midtown Manhattan.

And he does some tests on me.

And by tests, you know, that sounds so sophisticated, right?

He does some tests on me.

You know, he's like, put your right hand over your head,

try to lean over with your hip,

now try to touch your toes when you feel the pain.

And it was like 60 seconds worth of tests.

And then he just wrote out a prescription.

He didn't even look up at me.

He just went, here you go.

And I took the prescription.

And that was before 2020, obviously.

So I didn't have any suspicions of anybody

who was wearing a white mantle, you know.

Post 2020 a little bit.

If you don't know what I'm talking about,

I don't know where you've been for the last five years.

We have medical professionals and doctors at CityLight.

And they agree with me the most when I say things like this.

Meanwhile, everyday people are like, huh.

Are you bucking against the system?

Yes, I am.

And my first red flag was raised during this interaction.

I had no idea what kind of medicine I was getting.

This may sound naive, maybe it was.

I was already pastoring for many, many years when this happened.

I was in my 30s.

But I didn't know.

It said percuss set on it.

And it was a big bottle with a refill.

And my prescription was 10 milligrams three times a day.

I don't know what I was taking.

He said, how would you not know?

I didn't even watch the news before.

I mean, really.

It was just the Bible and the Lord and the people of the church.

So I had heard maybe like, you know, there's an oxycodon.

And so I knew like, oxycodon was bad.

But this wasn't an oxycodon.

This said percuss set.

Later I learned it's like the same thing.

One is like the Brent.

So I started taking it.

I noticed immediately, whoa, this stuff is awesome.

Not only does my back pain go away.

But everything is what like my cares go away too,

along with my back pain.

I mean, the thought of consequences doesn't exist when I'm on them.

I noticed that whatever I watch really comes to life.

In fact, like day three or day four,

how many of you remember our elder Sean Martin?

He's moved on to Eastern Long Island now.

Yeah.

Him and I went to a movie in downtown Brooklyn.

And in the middle of the movie, I had taken a percuss set

right before the movie.

And if you're watching this online and recording me,

I'm going to take this out of context.

I really don't care.

Right before the movie, I'm like, oh, you know,

those theater seats, they really cause a lot of back pain.

I'm going to pop one right before the movie.

And in the middle of the movie, I'm not kidding.

The characters start coming off the screen.

I turned to Sean Martin.

I said, never forget, I got real close to his face.

Everything is warped when this stuff kicks in.

You know, it's in the heroin family, right?

It's in the opioid family.

Except it's okay.

Because the nice man with many degrees

and the white mantle gave it to you.

Didn't tell me anything about it.

Didn't tell me the hazards, the risks, nothing.

Didn't look up at me when he gave me the script.

I looked at Sean.

I said, I have to leave here right now.

He very seriously must have thought it was a pastoral emergency.

He went, okay.

I just booked right out.

And after realizing that I was feeling way too good to be normal,

I looked into a little bit and realized, okay, I'm taking an opioid.

And it's in the heroin family.

Well, I still got these backpakes.

So that continued for another couple of months.

And then I thought to myself, well, I'm not a drug addict.

I've never had a problem with drugs.

And I'm going to quit this.

I shared in the first service how my first time ever,

ever with any kind of drugs, was when I was 16 years old,

two months before I got saved.

I was working in Pioneer Supermarket right on Queens Boulevard.

It doesn't exist anymore, but had for many decades.

Right in four stills.

And after work, a bunch of the people said, hey,

we're going on a flushing metal park right by the lake.

We're going to start a fire.

Can you even do that anymore?

But these to start a fire.

That the whole lake.

From karate kid, like the guitar and the fire,

except it wasn't a California beach.

It was right by the lake and flushing metal park.

And then somebody said, we should get a nickel bag.

A dime bag.

They said we should, but nobody could come up with ten bucks

or they got a nickel bag.

And I didn't know what any of those terms were.

I was 16 years old.

And they came back with the devil's lettuce.

I tried it once.

Yes, I did, but I didn't inhale.

No, I didn't inhale very deeply.

And then was so scared that I ran back home.

I knew my parents were coming and I ran back home.

And I didn't know this.

But the faster and harder I ran, the higher I got.

Anyway, and so that was my last time with the devil's lettuce.

Let me get back to my point.

I didn't have a background of this.

I didn't have a history of this.

So I'm now taking this medicine and I say to myself,

okay, I'm going to quit.

And with God, all things are possible.

I'm not going to be held by nature this thing.

I'm just going to stop.

And I did.

I just stopped.

Cold turkey.

I didn't know you weren't supposed to stop that way.

You're supposed to ween off.

The doctor never told me.

Can you believe that?

Never told me.

His office was in Columbus Circle.

Not that that matters, but you would think.

I don't know.

To me, it adds a little more professionalism into the air.

You're right in Columbus Circle.

You're overlooking the park.

You look so smart.

Why don't you tell me?

These aren't tick-tax.

You've given me.

This is stuff that can ruin my life.

And so I stopped taking them cold turkey.

And a few weeks later, I noticed my mood starts changing.

It starts shifting.

And I had never ever really had any kind of depressive episode before.

In fact, I didn't, as a pastor, know what depression was.

Most people who've never experienced real depression or anxiety

don't know what it is.

So for over a decade, pastoring, when someone said,

pastor, I'm dealing with depression,

I would think, well, you've got a bad case of the Mondays.

You're down.

You're sad.

It's all right.

You'll snap out of it.

God's with you.

Be warm and be filled.

And I realized depression.

It's not.

It's something that makes you feel sad.

It's not something that makes you feel glad.

It's something that just makes you not feel at all.

And I used to have an attitude towards people who did say

they were battling depression.

Look, that word is thrown around often.

Sometimes people are just sad.

You know, because you can't be depressed on Monday,

then find on Wednesday, then depressed again on Friday,

then find by Sunday.

You can't.

You just were sad.

You had a couple of day period where you were down in the dumps.

I never had real depression.

I had a couple of bad days, maybe a week,

but then I snapped right out of it.

But this was like I was falling down a bottomless hole

and each day was worse than the previous day.

I think it can't get any worse than this,

but then it would get even worse.

Well, surely this is the bottom, but then it would get even worse.

I don't even remember that back to the future movie.

You know when he's looking at the photo and his image is disappearing?

That's how I felt.

And depression, you don't feel anything.

Good, bad, nothing.

You just feel like you're stopping to exist.

It's like your thoughts and emotions just have an echo.

Nobody can understand you.

And I just keep descending and descending and descending.

And now I am also very, very anxious

because depression and anxiety go together.

So I can barely put together a sermon.

Eventually I stopped preaching altogether.

Thank God for Pastor Moe.

And wait, were you there then?

You were there in 25th.

Yes, you were.

That's right.

You were and Pastor Mike at the time.

And they lifted up my hands and they preached.

But I was done.

I was cooked.

I was finished.

And I knew so little about it.

I started to wonder what's going to happen to me.

What's going to happen to my wife of just a few years?

And my newborn son started getting thoughts of me being homeless

because I was incapable of doing anything.

I'm telling you, I was laying horizontally either at night

in my bed or on the couch just zoned out.

But I couldn't even watch anything because even a commercial

if it had any kind of energy to it, it would stress me out.

It would produce anxiety in me.

So I started seeing a psychiatrist.

I needed help.

So the psychiatrist put me on one medication.

That one medication had a side effect.

I forget what it was.

Something like I couldn't sleep.

So then he gave me another medication that would put me to sleep.

But that medication came with a side effect.

So he put me on another medication to combat that side effect.

But the medication that come by the side effect

came with three additional side effects.

And before I knew it had been about a month's time

I was on five separate medications.

I'm not getting better.

I'm getting worse.

My prayer life is really, really hindered by this.

Because the loneliness you feel when you're going through it.

And other people in the ministry were of zero help.

My close friends who were in ministry were of a help.

Not that they could tell me anything, but at least they came by.

And they were just with me.

I have this.

Remember when Marie and Pastor Ernst came back to my house?

I was asleep like that.

I just have this memory still of me slowly.

It was like a movie.

You know when you're slowly opening your eyes and it just is from dark.

And I just saw them at my feet.

I'm not in the couch.

Just saying at my feet just with their arms stretched, praying.

But I couldn't see that they were praying for me.

I more so the concern in their eyes.

And when I saw the concern in their eyes, I got even more afraid.

Like, oh, you look really serious.

Do I look that bad?

So by late fall of 2014, I'm spiraling.

And I started getting suicidal ideations.

Thoughts, again, never ever had a history of this.

Oh, by, I left this part out.

What if you couldn't connect the dots?

What was happening was drugs.

Even prescription drugs.

That make you quote unquote happier or elevate your mood.

They're doing that in an artificial way.

By acting as a chemical outside, external chemical stimulant or catalyst

to cause your brain to secrete serotonin and dopamine.

That's why when I would pop the medicine, I'd feel great.

Well, when you do that for several months, your brain gets used to the chemical catalyst.

And your brain can forget how to produce the happy chemicals serotonin and dopamine on their own.

By the way, they've checked with phones and constant phone scrolling.

Can work in a very, very similar way.

That's why people are addicted to their phones.

You take their phone away from them and you reveal the beast.

Come on up back.

I've forgotten how to be happy just alone.

My brain doesn't work without colorful, playful pictures.

And don't let it be too long.

I need it in 12 second bits.

And then after the next one to hit me.

So that final night at the psychiatrist's office, I'm completely disgruntled.

I'm having a difficult time relating to the Lord.

But one thing I will tell you is I'm looking to Him.

I want you to catch this.

The reason why I'm preaching this, by the way, is not only because you may not know this part of my past and my history with God.

It's because I've found that whenever you have a group of people, over 20 people, whether it's a subway car, a party, get together, you go to church, an office with 40 people,

I would say that about a fifth of them, 20% of them are going through, excuse me, they're going through it.

Not necessarily what I was going through, depression, anxiety, could be, but they're just going through it.

The Bible describes as a tight place, the world says between a rock and a hard place.

In other words, life is no fun.

Life hurts. You dread waking up.

It could be financial. It could be relational.

But you're under the gun.

You didn't wake up this morning.

What a beautiful spring day. Oh, it's Mother's Day.

Oh, you woke up with dread.

This message is for you because we serve the God of the impossible and the God of deliverance.

Do you know the word salvation?

One of its core definitions. It's deliverance.

It's rescue. He's the God who rescues from the pit.

Now, here I am. I have a history with God.

I know him. He's been good to me. I already have testimonies.

And me. I know he's good.

I'm sitting in a psychiatrist's office with my mommy because my wife had to take care of her newborn.

You know, it's kind of humiliating. I'm looking at my mommy.

She's looking terrified. She's never seen this happen to me before.

I'm sitting across from his table and because I had mentioned suicidal ideations,

he said it might be time to go to a mental hospital.

So I go, great.

Whatever, anything.

I said, when do I get to go? He said, well, you mentioned suicide. You go tonight.

I said, okay.

So the doctor's office was in Forest Hills. I go to Zucker Hillside Hospital

into the mental health pavilion. That sounds so nice. Mental health pavilion.

I'd always called it the funny farm, the loony bin, the nut house.

That's where I went. The mental health pavilion.

So maybe you look like you want to laugh, but you don't know if you can.

You can. It's okay.

I'm like, we joke about it all the time.

I mean, like, I've always had a healthy appetite, but when you're on those medications,

you will eat this laptop.

You will, I put on 40 pounds during that period like that.

And so we still joke about how, like, when she would pick me up,

and stuff after some treatments, and I'd be like, can we go to the meatball place?

Look at this. She's laughing.

It's like, whatever keeps you from eating my hand and arm, we'll take you there.

So that night I go. I get there at around 9 p.m.

So they can't receive me yet. They can only process me the next day starting at 7 a.m.

So I have a script from the doctor for the mental hospital, but they can't process me.

So they have to wait overnight.

And first thing I notice is they take away my shoe laces.

I came in sweatpants, so they take away my waistband.

So I can't harm myself or anybody else with it.

And they put me alone in the padded room.

I'm like, I just went from, like, last month.

It was all good just a week ago.

It was fine now. I'm in a padded room.

And I'm waiting. I remember pacing that room.

I remember crying out to God.

Again, one thing I want to drive home here is that because of the severity of my situation,

my prayers were not pretty.

It was messy. I couldn't even pray.

I don't know if you've ever been to such a low point where you can't pray.

I have, I'd like to think, a strong relationship with the Lord.

I know in whom I have believed, but I could pray.

Not in the way I have prayed.

My prayers were more like grunts.

Oh, God.

Help.

He heard those prayers.

God doesn't mind getting in the mud and the quagmire.

God does not, he's not intimidated of messy situations.

In fact, I think he would rather have someone who's getting beat up messily say,

Lord, I need you than somebody in a polished way in Shakespearean English quoting Scripture.

God is looking at your heart.

And one thing, I made a lot of mistakes.

I can't even remember.

I just know that I went through that season like I was 10 days old in the Lord.

Not as I would think senior pastors should go through that.

Making mistakes left and right.

God never looked like he resented one second of me at all.

But I'll tell you one thing that I didn't allow to happen.

For me to get bitter at God, that's very important.

Because if you study out bitterness, especially bitter waters in the Bible,

there's a theme of bitterness and bitter waters and Satan coming and giving

or afflicting Christians to the point where they have a crisis of faith.

They allow their circumstances to mess with their theology.

They allow their circumstances to mess with their belief about God and his nature and his character

and they doubt the goodness of God, you can't let that happen.

Some of you you've met someone who used to be on fire for God and now they're just bitter.

Listen, feel a whole lot of emotions.

Pound the wall if you have to.

Scream if you have to.

But don't let your heart get bitter at God.

I'm telling you, he's not the one behind it.

And Satan's end game when you're going through it is to get you bitter at God.

Because that is the one thing that'll lock you up.

You can't get bitter at him.

So I get processed.

I'm in the hospital.

They start interviewing me.

The first thing they tell me is you're on five separate medications.

You are severely over-medicated.

Who did this to you?

I said, my psychiatrist, obviously.

The guy who also did this to me and sent me here.

He said, no, no, no.

We got to wean you off of all of this.

And also, have you considered ECT treatments?

I said, what?

What are those?

And her answer was electoral convulsive therapy.

I said, nice.

What is that?

And she said, well, probably the vernacular term, have you heard of electro-shock therapy?

And I said, like, in one who flew over the coupos nest?

And she laughed.

She said, that's what everybody says.

Great.

All of us.

So why would I need that?

She said, sir, you're in the near-catatonic state.

And we have officially diagnosed you with major depressive disorder.

There are parts of your brain that have fallen asleep.

They're not secreting the right chemicals that need to secrete.

I'm obviously paraphrasing right now.

And we want to pass an electro-curret through them in an effort to awaken your brain.

She said, there will be some side effects, like short-term memory loss.

But it'll all come back to you.

Some stuff to this day.

It hasn't come back to me.

And someone joked.

They have a friend who underwent it.

And the friend said that the good thing about ECTs is you can watch the same movie over and over again.

I laughed so hard.

Because Emily would, I would be like, afterwards.

After, let me just jump there.

I'm like, Emily, you got to see this.

She's like, babe, you've watched that movie twice.

I'm like, no way!

So anyway, I get the ECT treatments.

About a half a dozen of them in the hospital.

I'm discharged.

And then I do outpatient for the next several weeks.

And I do another half a dozen of them.

I feel messed up.

And let me just tell you how I feel as a man and as a husband.

I feel less than a zero.

Myself esteem is lower than a door man.

Satan is riding this.

By the way, minister friends, preacher friends.

Not the close ones, but the ones who would hear it.

They would all come, either call me up or come and try to cast demons out of me.

It wasn't a demon.

Many times it's not a demon.

Is the devil involved?

Yes.

And when he sees you suffering in any particular way,

it's like, if you get cut and you have a wound, that's not a demon.

You got cut in the forest.

You snagged a thorn bush.

You got cut.

The devil will spiritually press in on it.

And lean on that.

And it's usually in the area of your mind.

But he's not the source of it.

So I just find it funny that preachers,

they tend to always think it's something spiritual, demonic.

And it doesn't necessarily have to be,

look, we can walk and chew gum at the same time as charismatic Holy Spirit-filled Christians.

Amen.

We can believe there is a spiritual realm.

And that, yes, demons are real and they hate you and they want to flick you.

Also, we can use wisdom and logic and know that we live in a natural world

and that certain actions will have consequences like with me.

Taking percuss that and not weaning off very bad for you.

Amen.

So I get back.

And my memory is completely, it feels completely wiped.

We had an East Village Service every Friday night.

My first time going to the East Village Service that Friday night,

which I had done thousands of times before.

I didn't know how to drive from Williamsburg right over the Williamsburg Bridge.

Boom, you land in the East Village.

I didn't know how to get there.

I could not remember it.

I had to put it in Google Maps.

I remember that first day back home in the shower, mesmerized.

You have the corner shower caddy with your potions and lotions and shampoos and things.

I'm looking at it and mesmerized, what are all these things?

I forgot how to shower.

I'm reading.

I'm going, okay.

I remember now shampoo with that conditioner.

I remember.

It's all coming back to me now.

But the fact that I had to think about it.

Hallelujah.

I'm sharing this because some of you have just known me in a victorious state.

But I want you to know that I have smacked the floor and kissed the floor multiple times.

I'm just giving you one particularly colorful story.

But God was there and He redeemed me from the pit.

And whatever you're going through today, I want you to know that if you're not dead, he's not done.

And that God is with you and that his specialty is delivering from pain.

Amen.

Amen.

I want to read a couple of scriptures to you.

Psalm 103 verses 1 through 5.

Psalms 103:1–5

Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me.

Bless His holy name.

Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits.

Who forgives all your iniquities, who heals all your diseases.

Who redeems your life from destruction.

Who crowns you with loving kindness and tender mercies.

Who satisfies your mouth with good things so that your youth is renewed like the eagles.

Let's just go back to verse 4.

Who redeems your life from destruction.

Who do you believe in church?

He redeems your life from destruction.

Stuff will happen.

Stuff will happen.

You live in a fallen world, so stuff is going to happen.

I believe God good, devil bad.

God gives good stuff, Satan sends bad stuff.

And sometimes bad stuff just happens because you're living in a fallen world.

One thing you hear, unbelievers, atheists, those who don't have a proper understanding of the scripture,

they always blame God for everything.

If there's a car wreck, what's the first thing you hear?

Why did God allow that car full of children to crash and go off a cliff?

Why did God allow?

Why do you think he allowed it?

What do you think? He's a giant puppet master in the sky controlling every single thing?

If that were true, then it would be fair to say he's doing a terrible job.

But that's not true.

There are other wills here.

There is the enemy warring against humanity.

There's people with free wills.

And some stuff just happens because we live in a fallen world.

And as a Christian, our sense is bad things happen in a fallen world.

But I'm not of this world.

I'm of God.

My citizenship is in heaven, so by faith we contend that we are in a protected bubble of God's glory of his protection,

sealed with the blood of Jesus and the Holy Spirit.

But sometimes it happens, stuff gets in.

What do you do then?

You look to God and you never quit and you never give up.

The one voice, yeah, I kept hearing.

It was like a broken record.

Like a record on a loop just over was quit.

Quit, quit.

You need to stop.

Quit the church.

It's close to nothing but pain.

You can't handle it anymore.

Look at you.

Man make you depressive disorder.

Anxiety.

You're in a mental hospital, pastor.

You should just quit.

And then I think of what the Lord has done since then.

I think if I had quit, what?

I would have missed out on the best and the biggest that God still had yet in store.

Don't you quit.

Don't you abort the promise of God.

Don't short circuit that blessing.

Never, ever quit.

Amen.

Hallelujah.

Psalm 40 verse 2.

Psalms 40:2

For all the people who feel like they're in a pit right now,

which according to my estimation, could be as high as one-fifth of you right now.

He also brought me up out of a horrible pit, out of the myry clay,

and set my feet upon a rock and established my steps.

This is who he is and this is what he does.

The Savior of the world, the deliverer of his people,

who redeems from the horrible pit, Psalm 30 verse 3.

Psalms 30:3

O Lord, you brought my soul up from the grave.

You have kept me alive that I should not go down to the pit.

I just felt something in my spirit.

The Lord loves you.

Listen to me.

I'm not saying that in this general way.

My God just loves.

No, he loves you.

He's counted every here on your head.

He knows your name.

He's called you out by name.

He cares about you.

And God loves ugly.

Yeah, he does.

And without Jesus, we're all pretty ugly.

And I've been doing this long enough to know we all have secret stuff.

Secret stuff we're battling.

This is what I feel the Lord interrupted, what I was saying.

Because there's some people here.

You're bound.

You have addictions.

And one of the main things you battle is self-hatred.

Self-hatred because you feel like you're a failure and you need to snap out of that.

That is a demon.

That is a demon reinforcing his lives.

You start thinking like that and then imagining negativity and bad things happening to you in your future.

You're actually replaying Satan's wish list for your life.

That needs to be cut out.

You need to look to the Lord.

Pastor Moses said something just in the intro.

He said, if you're not enjoying Christianity, if you're not enjoying your salvation, you're doing it wrong.

Yeah, very true, very accurate.

And if you're under guilt, shame, condemnation, self-loathing, you are constantly feeling like you're letting God down.

In that state, where you feel like you're letting God down, why don't you look to Him and just go, God help.

God, I need you.

Form Christ in me.

Take me higher.

Transform me more.

Just one prayer like that. He becomes rushing in.

Do not stop. Do not stop in short circuit. His hand from working in your life.

Because he's still working. He's molding. He's shaping.

You're maybe disgusted with you. You've lost patience with you.

He's not like you, thank God. Amen.

He's not like me. He's long suffering.

Very, very kind, very, very patient.

One thing when you're going through it, Jesus made a promise.

He said, no one can snatch you out of my hand. No one.

But people can jump out.

So don't jump out.

Don't quit. Don't quit the Lord. Don't allow bitterness into your heart.

Keep holding His hand even if it's messy and ugly. Amen.

Amen.

Worship team, you can come on up.

Lamentations three versus 55 through 57.

And let's get communion ready.

Because we're going to pray and we're going to receive communion.

And I want to pray for you. We're receiving communion.

When we do, we're partaking of the victory of Jesus.

And what I'm trusting specifically is that any force of the enemy,

anything not of God, would not just get disrupted,

but completely dismantled and would fall to the ground in your life,

in Jesus' name.

And then you're filled with divine patience and heavenly endurance.

That if you're going through it, you can still put one foot in front of the other

and say a hallelujah.

Even while you're putting one foot in front of the other in pain,

you can still say a hallelujah.

That there's a hallelujah anyhow.

Lamentations says,

because I called on your name, O Lord, from the lowest pit.

There's something about just calling on the name of Jesus.

You can begin passing them. Thank you.

You have heard my voice. Do not hide your ear from my sighing,

from my cry for help. Do not hide your ear from my sighing.

Thank you. That was about 80% of my prayer life.

Now, he's not always going to respond to a prayer like that,

but if you're going through it, he will.

He's going to give you mercy.

In other words, I couldn't even pray.

It was just, ah!

Ah!

You know, he hears those.

If your heart is open to him, you're still looking to Jesus,

maker of heaven and earth. He hears that.

He hears that better than a polished prayer.

I called on your name, O Lord, from the lowest pit.

Next verse.

You have heard my voice. Do not hide your ear from my sighing,

from my cry for help.

You drew near on the day I called on you and said,

do not fear.

And second Corinthians, one ten,

who delivered us from so great a death and does deliver us

in whom we trust that he will still deliver us.

Thank you, Jesus.

Hallelujah.

Hallelujah.

And when you're going through it, don't allow what you're going through

to shape your theology.

Your theology should be shaped by the Word of God and the Word of God alone,

not by your circumstances.

Because after I went through what I went through and some people said,

so God let you go through that so you could learn, no!

God did use that as a great learning example,

but he didn't bring it upon my life, so I would learn.

But it happened.

And yes, I learned a lot from it.

It's made me a better human being, a better pastor,

a better father, a better husband,

more patient, more merciful, kinder, gentler,

not some good pride out of me.

It's impossible to be proud when your sweatpants are falling off of you.

You got no shoelaces.

My wife was teasing me afterwards.

She said, you came back with all this lingo.

She's like, you kept talking about sharps.

I'm like, oh yeah, razor blade.

There's like no sharps policy, baby, no sharps.

Beard and stuff, I couldn't trim properly.

Yeah, you can, no sharps.

What else did I say? What's one of the things?

Anything besides, that was the main one.

What else was there?

There were some other things you teased me about.

All right.

Thank you, Lord.

This is good.

I hope you've been encouraged also.

Also, in addition to you being encouraged,

encouraged, it serves as a great filter.

For people who are really called to CityLight

and for those who are absolutely repulsed right now

and I'll never see you again.

This is how we keep just the Hale and Hardy committed ones.

But there's also good things.

Like somebody might find out you're going to CityLight

and they're like, oh, your pastor's crazy.

And you can be like, no, he isn't.

And he has the documents to prove it now.

He has his release forms and so he's not.

And you correct them and let them know.

He's totally fine now.

God, we love you.

You are good.

Save us as a declaration of faith.

In the name of Jesus, I receive your body and blood.

Your body was broken for me.

Your blood was shed for me.

To take away my sins.

Victory, over death, hell, and the grave

was purchased for me with your broken body

and your shed blood.

I receive now the victory of Christ into my life

and your delivering power in Jesus' name.

Amen.

That you have been reminded how much God loves you

and that you are surrounded by grace.

Thank you for listening.

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